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Friday, 23 May 2014

Ringing The Changes

In 1906 the Liberal Party,
led by a Scot, Henry Campbell-Bannerman, won a landslide election after the
Conservatives had run into a number of difficulties. Even Arthur Balfour, their Leader and another
Scot, had lost his seat.

There was a new party in
contention, The Labour Party, led by a Scot, Keir Hardie, had won around thirty
seats in a scattering of industrial areas.
In an age of two member constituencies, in some cases they were
"junior" members allowed in by local deals.

By 1935, the once great
and ruling Liberal Party had fragmented and were down to 20 seats. Led by Sir Archibald Sinclair, of a leading
Scottish family, albeit born in Chelsea, they went into the 1945 election and a
worse debacle in the year of Labour's landslide win.

The Labour members of 1906
were not seen as a coming party and their members on the whole seemed very
ordinary men with a handful of exceptions and they were underrated. Limited by money, M.P.'s then were not paid with the poorer depending on others.

It seemed then to most
experts and the journals that they might be a "nuisance" group
essentially to be perhaps ignored, sometimes given concessions and when
necessary bought off. Yet they saw off
the Liberal Party and at a critical time in history inflicted a heavy and
humiliating defeat on the Conservatives.

During the 1980's we had
the emergence of the Liberal Democrat's in an attempt to marry centrist Labour
people with what was left of the Liberal Party, then the last refuge of the
eccentrics.

Their hopes of power were
not shared by the electorate at large and it took one of the major financial
disasters of history to put them into a coalition with any sort of
influence. They have not handled the
situation wisely, largely adding to the confusion and being too imprisoned by
their past.

Do we now have a new
situation developing? If so the chances
are with modern media and more transient loyalties as well as a society with
divergences the pace of change could be a great deal more rapid.